When dealing with the issue of transgender bathroom access, many people attempt to connect gender issues in general with various parts of the Bible. Probably one of the more common questions I read is something along the lines of: “if God created intersexual and transgender people, then why was there only a male and a female in the Garden of Eden?”

So let’s look at this question at face value, putting aside debates about whether Adam and Eve were real people or literary devices. Let’s look at this question from the side of a person that believes that Adam and Eve were real, and that all humans are descended from them.

Therefore the question is a valid one from that mindset, so lets take it to its logical conclusions. Two people meant there were only two sexes. That much we can read. But what else does that mean? Two people in the garden means that at most, there were also only two ethnicities, two hair colors, two eye colors, two adult heights, two personalities, etc. And this is all at most – Adam and Eve might have had the same hair color for instance, or might have both been introverts (wouldn’t that have ended the whole human race pretty fast, huh?). If our physical, mental, and emotion states were limited to only what was present in two people at creation, that means that every aspect of humanity is would still currently be limited to two possibilities.

But that is not what happened in reality. Now we have more than two possibilities for all physical, emotional, and mental characteristics in the world today. Think about it: whether you are born male or tall or black or cranky or genius is all coded in the same genetic strand. If you can have a different nose length than either Adam or Eve did, then you can also have a different sex or gender than either of them. Its all part of the exact same process.

God creating something in the garden means just that – God needed those parameters for creation. That does not necessarily mean that what God used for creation is what is also decreed as the only options for all times (basic genetics proves that). To say that what God used for creation is also a decree for what must be for all time is adding to what the Bible. God needed male and female for creation, and now creation is over.